After a rather quite week at work and on the imminence of a cold I decided to have some quality couch time a couple of days ago. That was when, just somewhere between an old episode of Friends and the new Skins season, I came across Ford’s and Honda’s new ads on TV. I had a quick look around the internet just to find out here and here, people talking about how Honda’s ad is much more interesting, engaging and fun than Ford’s one, and although I agree with them what really stroked me is that neither ads are genuinely different or innovative.

It seems that there is a sort of an obsession on some formulas when it comes to advertising cars in general. It can be the happy group of engineers having gallons of fun in building a car from scratch in a most unusual way (Honda) or it can be the use of car parts to come up with a little piece of story, sequence (Ford).

I’m not saying that the insights, ideas or executions behind both ads are not creative or great. But the sad true is that there is nothing truly original or disruptive in neither one of them. To me Honda’s Playground is just another Audi or Skoda (however better executed than those), while Ford’s TVC is another Cog. What puts Honda in a better position than that of Fords is the fact that there is at least a thinking behind it that is nevertheless totally linked to the brands speech, spirit and attitude. Ford’s on the other hand says nothing about the brand.

Some advertising people might say that from the consumer point of view this says nothing, and that the formula might still work. But the fact is that I certainly expected more from Honda and W&K who are always looking for TOTALLY different ways and ideas, whilst from Ford, well… from Ford I didn’t expected much more than this.